From Deficit Approach to Developmental Learning Paradigm: A Longitudinal Investigation of the Interplay between Teacher Beliefs, Practice and a Professional Development Program

Abstract

To many teachers, assessments are still used as the endpoint of instruction. Though scholars and researchers have advocated the use of assessment data as evidence to inform teaching, teachers need to be shown how this is done and involvement in professional development (PD) program that equips teachers with these skills is pertinent. In addition, many authors and researchers (to name a few: Penn-Edwards, 2010; Schulman & Armitage, 2005 and Zakaria & Care, 2010) have consistently testified that for PD programs to yield effective results they must also target teacher beliefs. The study aims to identify how a teachers’ professional development program known as the Assessment and Learning Partnerships (ALPs) program changes teacher beliefs, knowledge and teaching practice and the degree to which this occurs. ALPs is currently participated by teachers of more than 200 schools across the state of Victoria, Australia. It promotes the use of a specific style of evidence-based teaching and its operation within a developmental learning paradigm is designed to lead to an improvement of student learning outcomes. Teachers based their teaching on developmental learning framework and evidence is used to identify students’ zones of proximal development which illustrate student readiness in learning. Teachers then use this information to scaffold student learning and target intervention. Data is collected longitudinally at two points of time over a period of one year. Three domains are tapped onto: teacher beliefs, knowledge and practice through the use of survey, knowledge test, teaching observations and semi-structured interviews. Data will then be triangulated to provide information about change in beliefs and practice. The discussion in this paper focuses on the data collected from the first round of survey administration. This data serves as baseline measures and used to establish association and relationships between teacher beliefs and practice.